Goals? What goals?

So. I’m nearing the end of Season Three of Buffy and approaching The Ascension. God, I love the Mayor. He’s so cheerfully evil. He’s my favorite kind of evil. You want him gone, but damn he’s entertaining! Sort of like Crowley in Supernatural. Not like Geoffrey in GOT. He couldn’t die soon enough, imo.

Meanwhile (huge sigh), it’s still winter, even though I wish it wasn’t. But...(and by the time spring gets here you’ll be sick of hearing me say this)…only 57 days til spring! I know it's just a date but it means the end of winter is in sight.

That’s what I wish it looked like out on my porch. Alas, it’s more like this:

(ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but I think I've illustrated my point)

But I digress. Let's talk about goals. I thought I'd keep myself honest by mentioning them once in a while. As far as books go I've done well so far, having read three whole books, all of which I enjoyed. I'm currently reading The Bone Clocks. I am also making progress with my revisions, and I've sent out a few queries on my scifi,  NO REST. So that's good. As far as exercise and food...well, not so good. I have been walking every morning and soon it will be light enough to walk at night when I get home, which will help. But. I found these awful Boston Creme Muffins with a chocolate glaze that are just soooo good...I really need to stop buying them.

But nevermind me, how are things with you? Enjoying any shows? Getting outside? Eating anything awful?

My love/hate relationship with revisions

I'm going to take a wild guess and say I'm not alone in this.

Part of me loves revisions because there are all these places where I've left notes for myself in my manuscript to 'fix this' or 'bw' (better word) or 'bt' (better transition) or whatever, not to mention all the notes my CP's have left me. These are all opportunities for me to make my manuscript a thousand times better than it was, which is why I love revisions. Because they're going to turn my manuscript from good to great. I know this. I've seen it happen.

But.

Then I get to one of those places* where revising is suddenly a chore. For me it's usually when I've failed to adequately convey the necessary information. Like the scene I'm working on now where my mc has finally found something she's been looking for and is about to get a bunch of answers. In my first version, the dialogue didn't follow. It felt forced.

I know what information needs to be conveyed. The trouble I'm having is revising this so that the conversation she has with the other person seems completely natural. So that each question seems to naturally follow the answer that came before AND convey all that necessary information.

I am making progress (check my progress bar for NO REST and you'll see it's up to 63% complete) but damn sometimes it's slow and hard.

So. That's how it is with me, today.

How's it going with you?



* For me, this is usually somewhere after the first act. I tend to write a fairly decent part one of three (my strength). Part two tends to get loose or fall apart entirely (my weakness) but if I can get through that then part three tries to pull it all together and make an ending, preferably a satisfying one. It isn't pretty, but it is a first draft.

An important public service announcement

My apologies for not offering much in the way of anything new, but I've been completely wrapped up in revisions. I do however have two fun posts planned: one being the latest installation of the Cephalopod Coffeehouse on July 25 in which we talk about a book we've read, and two being an interview with MJ Fifeld from My Pet Blog on July 28.

First Impressions will be back per usual at the beginning of August and Dianne and I have one opening left. If you want your first page critiqued by two published authors, check out the sidebar for the FAQs.

Meanwhile, I will continue to visit as best I can while I address the remaining issues in my latest endeavor* (I'm down from 57 to 7 fixes, woohoo!!!). Then I can get down to the nit-picky stuff like over-used words and passive sentences and missing/wrong punctuation. After that, it might just be ready for readers...

How are you doing? What are you working on?


* PEACE & FORGIVENESS

no rest

I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! For a while there it felt like I was wading through quicksand trying to get to the fabled ending of my tale. I was having trouble bridging where I was to where I wanted to be. So I wrote the very end, the last scene, and voila! Everything pretty much fell into place and I wrote a couple thousand words between yesterday and today. Go me!

How's your Monday going?

Query land

I have officially entered the dreaded dominion known as Queryland, where agents rule and the only thing to do is wait. Or, get busy with something else. And since I hate waiting I have decided to do just that. Plus I'm catching up on my reading thanks to all those free ARCS my local bookstore gave me. Among them was this one

which I enjoyed quite a bit. I also read JINX, and MAGGOT MOON. THE DARKEST MINDS is next.

What are you reading and what do you do instead of waiting?

It's all about you

Seriously. Today I want to know about you. It doesn't have to be anything earth-shaking, but it has to be about you and no one else. Like what you're doing right this minute (at work sneaking a peak at the blogosphere?), what you're writing (do tell), what you saw this morning when you first stepped outside (sunrise? A bird on wire? a dead mouse on your porch thanks to kitty?), what you had for supper last night (take out? homemade?), dreamed last week (yes, please - I find dreams endlessly fascinating), just finished reading (and was it any good?), or ... anything. It can be trivial or mind blowing, but I want to know about you.

combing my hair in a whole new way redux

Jim White - Drill a Hole

Some of you may remember this post from last fall when I was just starting my story. I talked about doing things differently. And even though I am officially done with the first draft I am still doing things in a whole new way. Ordinarily I'd be plunging right back at it with revisions and edits. But instead I'm following some sage advice I read somewhere which suggested taking a break from your work before jumping right into revising. I think it said you were supposed to wait three months before looking at it again. But honestly, I can't wait three months. I'm not getting any younger sitting here, right?

Anyway, I haven't looked at it for an entire week. I've thought about it, but I've kept myself pretty busy with a little gem I hadn't looked at for a while. I may do something with it. Or, I may follow through with the story that came out of the Lightning Flashed Blogfest. I have that mostly outlined. But we'll see. For now I'm just allowing myself to write whatever I want for three weeks. Then I'll start revisions. Hopefully it will go well since I've got lots of notes from my critique partner (thank you Dianne!) as well my own purple pen scattered all through the manuscript. Until then, I'm just going to enjoy the warm weather and write what I like.

Oh, and I cleaned my desk off. Not a single 3 x 5 card, moved the books around, and placed the screen directly in front of me. We'll see if that helps :)

What are you doing? Enjoying the summer? Reading a good book? Writing lots? Or less? Do tell :)